On Wings of Shadow
by sheiswar
Summary: After months of living in seclusion, disguised as a member of the Forsaken, a black dragon ventures to Pandaria to face one of dragonkind's oldest enemies of all. (Multi-part, in progress.)


**A/N:** While some canon characters will be mentioned, the only major ones to appear will be the Sha featured in the game. Any other characters are original unless otherwise stated in an A/N.

**On Wings of Shadow**

Anger. Despair. Doubt. Hatred. Violence. Fear. 'The Sha,' the Pandaren called them. The very embodiment of negative emotions given life, will and desire, the Sha were capable of great destruction and influence throughout Pandaria – and their hold was felt in every region, every race, every ripple of darkness. To combat them, the Pandaren had created a unique sect of their finest warriors, trained throughout their entire lives – the Shado-Pan.

But the Shado-Pan knew not what they were fighting. They fought an enemy they understood only on the most minimal of levels. She knew better.

And there was no one in the world that she could tell. Everyone in the world who would understand what she had to say, who would believe her, would also have killed her on sight.

Because Beletseri was a black dragon – a wyrm from days of old, a child of Neltharion the Black and Sintharia, before their inevitable spiral into madness… their first brood, in fact. There was an order of execution on all of her kind, and she would be dead where she sat if anyone suspected her.

Not that she looked the part of a dragon. Typically, her kind took the form of the elven races, or the humans, sometimes gnomes – it was unheard of for any to assume the shape of the Forsaken undead, Sylvanas Windrunner's people. She alone braved the physical ailments of undeath. Her flesh rotted out around frequently-used joints, revealing one knee cap and her entire left wrist; she had leather patched over the center of her face in order to hold it together and her skin was a sickly grey-white. For an undead, she was remarkably well-maintained… perhaps even pretty. She'd been called that once: the prettiest undead of all. If only the Blood Elf knew.

Forsaken – so named for the light having abandoned them, having left them to their fate. How ironic that she was now trapped in that form, for her own people had forsaken _her_. Somewhere, fate was having a good laugh at her expense… and she was alone, without a soul to fully understand.

Nightfall found her perching upon the Serpent's Spine overlooking the Dread Wastes, swarmed by the armies of Mantid below. None of the insectoid creatures were brave – or perhaps the more accurate word was 'stupid' – enough to come near the dragoness, even in her humanoid form. Whether it was because of the aura of power she gave off, or the drake behind her perched with wings spread overlooking the masses, was unclear to her. She cared little for their intricate workings.

How could the warriors of Azeroth not recognize it?

The Qiraji were a lost race, but historians dictated the Scarab War well enough; the reason for it being erected in southern Silithus, to defend Kalimdor against the might of the Old God's empire. The Nerubians were significantly more well-known in years at present, and their worship of the God of the Dead was not forgotten. Both species had many similar features: warriors, all, and featuring insect-like features, unique and misunderstood, incapable of being reasoned with and impossible to fully conquer. Survivors.

The Mantid were the same. The Mogu had not bothered to fight them, sensing their species' strength, and they were wise in that choice, for they would have fought an enemy they could never fully defeat or even combat. Their real enemy was not the swarm on their wall. Their real enemy was the source of the Sha.

Legend said that there were five of them sealed. One of them was slain in combat with one of the Titans. It was assumed to have been the one that was the Qiraji's master – but she believed that assumption incorrect.

Beletseri believed she was looking at the fervent followers of the dead old God and that the Sha who terrorized Pandaria's lands were the last vestiges of its powers. The ruler of this region – as C'thun ruled his, as Yogg-Saron ruled the north and then the one beneath the sea…

The Sha. The name. The legends.

How she wished she had someone to ask! Alexstrasza would know. So would Nozdormu, and even Ysera. And… he would have known.

But he was gone, slain, and he would not have helped her. Not his rogue daughter who foolishly helped the mortal races in vanquishing the Lich King in Northrend.

Not that she was really 'helping.' Bel was, in fact, a member of the Royal Apothecary Society. In secret she helped Grand Apothecary Putress to build a plague capable of wiping out all of the races and she worked with the other apothecaries in making sure it was potent enough to spread – so potent, in fact, that even the Lifebinder's powers were not capable of eliminating all of its effects. And her hopes for the plague came to a skidding halt when Putress, obeying the master she did not realize he had (her own mistake and lack of forethought!), unleashed the plague at the Wrathgate.

It was marvelously effective. Absolutely marvelous. But it was wasted potential, for all of Azeroth knew what it was capable of. Inhumane, it was deemed. Monstrous. That was the point, of course, but there was a time and a place for such things. So much wasted effort! So much that could have been done, had they just waited – but Putress answered to Varimathras; scheming, deviant Varimathras. Oh, if only she had known!

No one alive knew of her participation. No one left in the world knew that Beletseri was involved with the Society, and that was how she intended to keep it. Mustn't answer any awkward questions.

Her father was dead. Her mother was dead. Her siblings, her friends – her mate. They were all dead. As far as she knew, only a small amount of black dragonkin lived. There were drakes, yes, sworn into the service of their mortal masters for debts to pay – and those drakes would never grow to full-sized dragons. It left only two of them in the world – two. And one of them was the instrumental force behind the murder of her kin – the whelp prince, Wrathion.

The people that Beletseri would have trusted to go to for information were gone. She was on her own in investigating. The problem was, she was a dragoness without a purpose. She felt a touch like she was spinning, spiraling with no hope of hitting the ground any time soon. In the mantid she saw the potential for disaster – and she was without a good way to address it.

"Do they make you nervous?" she asked of the drake behind her. Etherion was her companion frequently. As dragonkin, he knew that she was a dragon of some kind – but he could not imagine what color dragon she was… or that she was, in fact, his mother. These were the things that she kept to herself, the secrets that kept her alive. The drake kept her company, because he knew no other dragons that he felt he could trust. Instinct. It was alive and well. She was grateful for it sometimes – and resentful others.

Were he not bonded to another, indebted until her death (and she was undead in truth – her death could be a long ways off), Bel might have told Etherion the truth… but trust was not something any black dragon did well.

"They are a force of nature," Etherion replied, carefully examining one of the mantid scaling the wall defiantly. "A swarm, destruction embodied into living form and strength of will. They are driven and purposed. They have little fear. They are… intriguing."

"They breathe fear like air; they make it their strength," she agreed, as one of the pandaren archers cut down the mantid from the wall. Its battered, broken body fell to the ground, littered with arrows in limbs and torso. It was one of the arrows into its eyes that actually made it surrender. A frighteningly resilient race, to be sure. "But you did not answer my question."

Etherion turned his head toward Bel. Her hair was chin-length and dark red-violet; it fell over her face so that her golden eyes were obscured. She looked young – no older than twenty years at best. Funnily enough, though, she was thousands of years old; she'd lived through the Sundering. Etherion, on the other hand, was much younger and a far more impressive sight to behold, with obsidian scales plated over his body so dark as to resemble the night. Many black drakes had lava-red accenting to their hides, but Etherion did not; he was black as night, perfectly dark from the tip of his tail to his snout and over his wings.

He took after his mother.

"You suspect something of them," he said finally, one wing flicking as evidence of his discomfort. "The very earth trembles beneath their might. Nervous is… not the word. Uncomfortable would be more apt. They remind me of Azjol-Nerub."

"I suspect what you suspect: that they have more in common with the races of old than most would find comfortable."

Etherion flicked his wings and Bel watched him, rapt with attention. Another mantid began scaling the wall to the south and he was joined by flyers who descended on the pandaren archers like locusts. The screams of the three who fell to claws and blades bounced off the wall itself and the black-and-brown fur disappeared into the darkness and steady hum of beating wings. Three more deaths – three more lives lost. And more would fall soon. Darkness had settled over Pandaria and its defenders knew not what they were fighting. The priestess (for that was the role she assumed as Beletseri – a priestess of Shadow) stood up and turned to the drake.

"Darkness falls over the Dread Wastes. The mantid are at their most dangerous at night and I do not want to be here when next they swarm. Will you take me back to the Shrine of Two Moons?"

"But of course."


End file.
